Nobody Looked at You During the Will Reading… Until Your Name Was Called for Everything That Was Left

You do not breathe for a second.

The room seems to narrow around you, the dark-paneled library suddenly too small to hold what Ricardo Mendoza has just said. Rain ticks at the windows like impatient fingers. Somewhere behind you, an old grandfather clock keeps moving forward as though nothing in the world has changed, as though your father has not just rearranged the entire gravity of the Herrera family from beyond the grave.